


AUs of Autumn

by AccidentalAccount



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Multi, October Writing Prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 16:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2475263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccidentalAccount/pseuds/AccidentalAccount
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly what it says on the tin. Autumn AUs all about autumn and autumn-y things. Please note that these are not connected unless otherwise stated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scarf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saw someone doing this list of prompts on here, in the Mass Effect fandom, went out and found it, couldn't resist doing it myself. First prompt: 'this stranger on the street corner looks like they're severely unprepared for this cold weather, here, take my scarf, i was planning on donating it to goodwill anyways' au.

Ellie kicked up a few dead leaves littering the sidewalk and smiled. She'd always liked the color that came to Boston during the fall; splashes of red, orange, and yellow livening up the normally gray city, if only for a few months. Then December rolled around and people died of exposure and the like until the April thaw.

She frowned and kicked a few more leaves, burying her hands in her jacket pockets. It was the only one she owned and thin as hell. She used to have a thicker one; dark green and fitting her more like a trench coat, it was the warmest thing she'd ever owned. Naturally, Ross-a blonde jackass with a face like a pitbull-beat the shit out of her and took it.

Ellie's frown turned into a scowl and her fingers closed around her switchblade. He was going to bleed before he took anything else of hers.

She glanced up and stopped at the crosswalk. Jaywalking in Boston wasn't smart. People would sooner slam into you and keep going than lay on the brakes.  _That_  she learned the hard way. Her leg still ached whenever it rained.

A tall man in a dark green jacket like she used to have stopped beside her, a red scarf loosely wrapped around his neck. Ellie slouched and stuck out her chin, widening her stance slightly. It was the typical street rat posture and usually worked pretty well in getting people to leave her alone. Or when she was mugging someone, but that didn't happen often. Sparkly eyes and looking hungry usually did the job if quick fingers didn't.

The man glanced over at her and huffed in-what? Amusement? Derision? Maybe both. She hunched her shoulders and glared at him out of the corner of her eye.

_Fuck you too, buddy. Not cold enough yet for a winter coat and scarf, fuckin' tourist._

The walk light flicked on and she took one step forward when a hand landed on her shoulder. Ellie jumped and skittered sideways, shooting the man her hardest glare and pulling her hands out of her pockets. "Don't fucking touch me, old man."

His gray eyes flickered with something that could have been sad, but then it was gone, replaced by cool indifference. He wordlessly took off his scarf and held it out to her.

_...The fuck?_

She cast a wary eye over the red fabric, then turned it on the old man.  _Old_  was maybe exaggerating. His black hair and beard were shot with gray, but the cut of his build said he was middle-aged.  _Must've seen some shit,_  she mused, remembering Howard, who died last winter at forty-four. Tough old veteran had more gray than this tourist when he went.

His skin was a bit tanned and weathered, crows feet at the corners of his eyes and faint worry lines etched into his forehead. He sighed and let his hand fall, then held the scarf out to her again.

"You takin' it or not?"

Definitely a tourist, with that Texan accent. Ellie scoffed and shoved her hands in her pockets.

"Depends on what sort of strings are attached."

The tourist rolled his eyes. "None. I was plannin' on gettin' rid of this old thing anyway; might as well give it to someone who could use it."

She looked at the scarf again. It was a little threadbare, but the fabric looked rich and the dye was still vibrant, despite its apparent age. It looked like the same red as the leaves…

Ellie hesitantly took it, keeping a wary eye on the tourist. The scarf was warm and soft, and when she wrapped it around her neck, smelled like coffee and gun grease.  _That_  was interesting. He must work with guns often, for the scarf to smell like one. The thing was so big it spilled over her shoulders and a little past her waist, but she liked it.

The tourist sighed and unravelled the scarf. She took a step back, tensing up and opened her mouth to protest.

"Hush," he said, pinning her with a stern look. To her own surprise, Ellie obeyed. The tourist wound it three times around her neck, then tied it in front with ease that spoke of many years of practice. It made her wonder if he was a father, the way he went about it. At least, that's what she thought fathers were like. The scarf hung over her torso, the tassels on the end reaching to just below her chest.

"There. Keep it like that, and you'll be warmer."

The tourist stepped back and looked across the street. The crosswalk light was red again. Ellie toyed with the tassels.

"Why's it smell like gun oil?"

The tourist glanced over at her. "What's a kid like you knowin' what gun oil smells like?"

Ellie set her jaw and lifted her chin. "Whaddya mean a 'kid like me?'"

He rolled his eyes. "Kids like you should be in school, not pokin' around where guns are."

She rolled her eyes back at him. "Had friend who was a cop. Winston. He'd pay me to clean his gun."

The tourist looked over at her, something like alarm flashing across his face. Ellie scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Not his  _dick,_  his service revolver," she spat. "Jesus. I'm not a whore. And you didn't answer my question."

The tourist sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I own a gun. Obviously."

She sneered at him and they stood in silence for a few seconds. The light stayed red.

"Are you a dad?"

He tensed at the question and gave her a hard look. "Why?"

Ellie shrugged and looked down at her shoes. "Just got the impression."

He turned back to watching the light, still tense. "Was."

 _Shit..._  She looked up and took in his stony expression. "Sorry…"

The tourist grunted. "Drop it."

The light finally turned green and Ellie stepped out onto the street, the tourist two paces behind her.

"Do you have a name, tourist?" she asked, sticking her hands in her pockets and falling in step with him. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"That obvious, huh?"

"C'mon. Texan accent, heavy coat, scarf. No way you're not a tourist."

He gave an amused huff. "You don't sound too Boston yourself. More like a corn-fed midwesterner."

"The benefits of being taught how to read by a Nebraskan librarian," Ellie said with a shrug. "I honestly hate the Boston accent. It's really just a bastardization of Italian, but more nasally and shouty. Why do you keep deflecting my questions?"

He stopped for a second, then kept moving. He shrugged. "Habit, I suppose. Name's Joel."

"Ellie. Why's it a habit?"

Joel shrugged again. "Busybodies like stickin' their noses where they ain't welcome. Folk in small towns don't have much else to do but gossip."

"And that's why you're here?" They turned the corner and Joel nodded.

"Partially. Mostly here for work. Have a friend I was gonna meet today. Said she had a job opportunity for me."

Ellie's brow furrowed. "Your friend wouldn't happen to be Tess Wersching, would she?"

Joel's eyebrows shot into his hairline. "You know her?"

She shook her head. "No, not really. But just about everyone on the street's heard of her. Word is she's got something going on with the Robert, a big wig in black market trade. Word also is she's been looking for muscle."

She gave Joel a critical once-over. "Didn't really peg you for a meathead."

A harsh, bitter thing that might have been a laugh fell out of his mouth. "You and me both, kid."

He stopped in front of a coffee shop where-presumably-he'd be meeting this Tess person, and dug through his coat pocket, eventually producing a fifty dollar bill. "Here. Get a coat and some boots. Gonna be a cold winter."

Ellie stared at the bill for a second, then had to force herself not to snatch it and hold on like it would turn to dust if she let go. Instead she took it calmly, like a normal person, and tucked it in her pocket. She gave Joel a crooked grin. "See you around, old man. Tell Tess if she needs ears, I'm willing to sell."

The sort of sad look came back to his face for a moment, but was gone just as fast. "You take care, kid."


	2. Latte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This prompt is: 'i ordered a pumpkin spice latte at starbucks and you made a heart with the foam and i decided to drink it here so i can smile at you some more' au. Reviews sustain me.

The redhead had spunk, Riley would give her that. Anyone able to bully a six-foot asshole out of a Starbucks at ten at night was certainly crazy enough to be interesting.

_"-and fuck you kindly!"_

The barista slammed the door behind the rude-as-hell customer with slightly more force than necessary, and stalked back over to behind the counter. She took a deep breath and combed a few strands of red hair out of her freckled face, then turned to Riley with a forced smile bordering on scary.

She couldn't help but grin back. "So. Your day seems like it went well."

The smile turned into a grimace and the barista pinched the bridge of her nose, leaning against the counter. "You've no fucking idea."

Riley turned a laugh into a cough, hiding her smile behind her hand. "Sucks, man. But I hear coffee has bean the grounds of many a strong and heated discussion."

The barista looked up, her jaw slack and eyes wide.

_Jesus, that's a vivid green…_

"Did you just…?" She broke first into a fit of giggles, which progressed to full laughter. Her laughter proved to be infectious, and Riley joined in. The few other patrons in the small coffee shop stared at them like they were insane, but the barista either didn't notice or didn't care.

"Coffee's my daily grind," she said with a wide grin once she calmed herself down enough to speak. "But it can cause a latte problems."

Riley doubled over in her laughter. They both were probably finding the puns way too funny—she could have sworn the barista's laughter was slightly hysterical—but she couldn't bring herself to care. It felt good to laugh. She'd been so stressed lately, trying to juggle work and her late father's wishes for her to join the military—which was enforced by a judgmental Memaw several states away and a lifetime of being groomed for it—that it was amazing to just let it all go for a minute. By the dark circles under the redhead's eyes and her hair messily pulled back into a ponytail, Riley guessed she felt much the same.

Their laughter faded to giggles and the barista combed a few strands of hair out of her face again. "Oh, man. Thanks for that. So, what would you like?"

"I...actually don't know. Never had the pumpkin spice latte before, I guess, " Riley said, remnants of mirth still tugging at the corners of her lips. "Is it any good?"

The barista put on a deadpan expression. "It's pumpkin perfected; the taste of fall."

Riley snorted and grinned, recognizing the words straight from the advertisement. "What's it really?"

"Overpriced shit."

She barked a laugh and the barista grinned crookedly. "In that case, just a regular old vanilla latte."

"Here or to go?" she asked, moving away from the counter to make the drink.

"Here, please," Riley replied, pulling out her wallet. "How much do I owe you?"

"Oh, don't worry about it; I'll pick it up," the barista said offhandedly, waving away the money.

Riley blinked. "What?"

The redhead shrugged and Riley could have sworn she saw a blush creeping up her cheeks. "You made me laugh. It's the least I can do."

Riley pointedly dropped a five dollar bill in the empty tip jar and smiled cheekily. The barista rolled her eyes and put the finishing touches on the coffee. "It's two thirty, genius. Says it on the sign."

"Maybe I was tipping how much money I'd have if I had five dollars every time I saw someone as beautiful as you."

 _Oh shit._  She bit the inside of her mouth.  _Where the hell did_ that _come from?_  The barista almost dropped the coffee, turning bright red. She set it down on the counter and bit her lip, not quite meeting Riley's eyes, which were watching the barista's lips.

_Fuck. This isn't supposed to happen._

She tore her eyes away from the barista and picked up the cup. Either there was a sloppy heart drawn in the foam, or the Powers That Be were fucking with her.

_Shit. Shit shit shit. I'm not even into girls. Am I?_

She glanced up at the barista, who was still blushing and awkwardly staring at her shoes, and imagined kissing her. A little thrill shot through her.

_Fuck. Guess I am._

Riley stared down at her latte and made a decision. She leaned against the counter—there was no line to hold up—took a sip of her coffee, and grinned at the barista when she looked up.  _She's cute and seems interested; might as well see how deep this rabbit hole goes._  She turned redder, if that were possible, and nervously hunched her shoulders.

"I...uh...I-"

"-want my number?" Riley finished for her with a slight smile. Her green eyes slid away and she wrung her hands.

"If that's okay? I-I don't want to assume, I just-"

"Hey," Riley said, cutting her off. She leaned forward and placed a hand on her shoulder, glancing down at her nametag as she did so.  _Ellie. Fucking hell, even her name is adorable._  "Relax, Ellie. I don't bite. Can I see your phone?"

Ellie fumbled pulling her phone out of her pocket, nearly dropping it, and handed it to her. Riley opened the contacts list to add herself and paused. There was only one contact; Marlene.

_What the hell? Who only has one—No, not my business. I'm not going to ask._

Riley made a new contact and added her number, then handed Ellie her phone back. She looked down at it, then smiled sheepishly.

"I guess I probably should've asked your name before asking for your number, Riley."

Riley grinned back and shrugged. "It's fine. When does your shift end?"

"It actually ended an hour ago," Ellie admitted, rubbing the back of her neck. "But there's no one else here and I'm not supposed to board everything up until eleven."

"Which would be in thirty minutes."

"Which would be in thirty minutes," Ellie agreed with a sigh, crossing her arms. Riley leaned back against the counter and smiled.

"Guess you're stuck with me 'til closing time, then," she said. The redhead shook her head, but she was smiling.

"You don't have to do that. It's late, and you probably have someone waiting for you at home, right?"

Riley's smile faded and she looked down into her latte, which had grown lukewarm while they talked. "Not really. Just a house of ghosts."

Ellie went still behind her. "Yeah. Me too."


	3. Pumpkin Patch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I swear to god the first thing I thought of when I saw this prompt was something cute. I don't know what happened.

"Jooeeel," Ellie whined, dragging her feet. "Do we have to?"

He half-turned and shot her a look "You've never celebrated a traditional Halloween. This is happening. And Sarah'll skin us both if we don't come back with that perfect pumpkin she keeps goin' on about."

Ellie sighed and stuck her hands in her pockets, reluctantly trudging after her guardian. She supposed Joel had a point about Sarah. Even if she was only twelve and a head shorter, she could be pretty damn scary when she wanted to be. Not to mention her horror upon discovering that Ellie had never gone trick-or-treating or carved a jack-o-lantern. After that, it was impossible to steer the little slave-driver onto a different train of thought; Sarah was going to make Ellie have a perfect Halloween, dammit, whether she wanted it or not.

That was why she and Joel were going to tromp through a pumpkin patch in Natick, fourteen miles outside Boston, at eight in the morning while Sarah was stuck in the hospital under the watchful eye of Tess.

"Alright," Joel said, stopping at the edge of the field and scratching his beard thoughtfully. "Divide and conquer; I'll take the left side, you take the right. Holler if you find it, and meet me back here in an hour if you don't."

Ellie shrugged and stifled the urge to sigh again. "Alright."

He glanced over at her and his face momentarily softened. "I know this seems silly, Ellie, but you know how Sarah gets. She-"

He blinked hard and cleared his throat. Ellie pretended not to see the tears forming in his eyes. "She wants to see you really be part of the family before she…"

The unsaid word hung over them like a guillotine waiting to fall. Ellie clenched her jaw and glared down at her shoes. It wasn't fucking fair.

"I know." The words felt like gravel in her mouth. "But you didn't have to come. Tess could've taken me-"

"Ellie. We're here now. No use in what-ifs. Let's find that pumpkin, alright?" And the typical Joel gruffness was back as he turned and walked left, down the long column of orange pumpkins hanging on mostly-dead vines. Ellie sighed and walked right, looking over the vegetables.  _Wait. Not vegetables. Pumpkins are squash, meaning they're fruit._

Regardless, none seemed to be "perfect," as Sarah described it. Ellie walked up and down four rows before she saw one that even came close.  
It was squat and round, but not too squat as to make carving it impossible. It was also slightly asymmetrical, tilting more to one side, but was otherwise as close to perfect as a pumpkin could be. Ellie crouched next to it and tested the vine to see if she could just snap it off.

"Hey!"

She looked up to see a girl of maybe around sixteen running across the pumpkin patch towards her. She slowed to a stop in front of Ellie and doubled over, panting with her hands on her knees.

"Shit, I need to run more." The girl straightened and she gave Ellie a smile that tried to be apologetic, but it was ruined by a mischievous glint in her brown eyes. "Hate to piss all over your parade, but I've had my eye on this beauty for a while now. I've just been waiting for old Burns to open up the 'pick your own' thing."  
For a second, Ellie didn't know how to respond.

"Okay…" she said slowly, raising an eyebrow. "You're saying you have a claim to it just because you've been looking at it?"

The girl looked surprised. "Well, yeah. Haven't you ever heard someone use the excuse of 'I saw it first?' I mean, I'd have called dibs, but it's kinda hard to announce that to everyone who walks into this field."

"So you haven't called dibs," Ellie clarified. She put a possessive hand on the pumpkin's surface. "In that case: dibs."

"You-!" The girl sputtered, looking torn between being angry and laughing. "Well played, well played."

She crouched down across from Ellie and grinned, the white of her teeth a sharp contrast against her dark skin. "But let's debate. Who wants the pumpkin more?"  
Ellie arched her eyebrow again. "'Want' seems like a very subjective criteria."

The girl thought for a moment. "Then we'll decide who has the best argument for keeping it."

"That was a completely useless rephrasing . Shouldn't we have a mediator or something for this?"

"Pfft." The girl waved her hand dismissively. "We're big girls; we can always resort to rock-paper-scissors."

Ellie chuckled. "Okay. You first, then."

The girl thought for a moment, toying with the cuffs of her denim jacket, her face darkening. When she spoke, her voice was flat. "This is the first Halloween I'll be spending without my parents. They died half a year ago. When I was little, my dad would take me out to this farm and we'd search for hours for the perfect pumpkin."

She nodded at the pumpkin between them. "Your turn."

Ellie hesitated, then began. "I've never celebrated Halloween before. It's always just been another day to me. But I was recently taken in by this guy who has another daughter. She's twelve. Her name is Sarah, and...she wants me to have a perfect first Halloween. That includes a perfect pumpkin."

She paused and bit her lip.  _Now for the hard part._  "She...she has leukemia. The doctors aren't optimistic about her chances of getting through the month."

The girl sat back and held up her hands. "Fuck, man. You win. Take the pumpkin."

Ellie blinked. "Really?"

"Really. Carve up that motherfucker with Sarah before it's too late."

Ellie looked down at the pumpkin, then back up at the girl. "Are you sure? What about your parents?"

The girl shrugged and smiled, but there was a sadness to it. "I've got years to say goodbye. There's only so much time you can spend with people while they're here. Don't give that up."

She paused and laughed self-deprecatingly at herself. "What the hell am I saying? You're an orphan, too, right? You already know that."

Ellie smiled thinly and shrugged. "Hard to learn a lesson about family when you've never really had one, though."

The girl raised an eyebrow. "What about the people you're with now? Don't you think of them as family? "

"They're good people. I haven't been with them very for very long, though. Only about a month and a half. Before that..." Ellie shrugged again and picked at the dead grass next to the pumpkin. "You'd be surprised the kind of people they let foster kids."

The girl frowned. "Just how long have you been bounced around inside the system?"

"All fifteen years of my life," Ellie replied with a bitter smile. "Foster care isn't the only option, but I didn't meet any requirements to petition for emancipation."

"Emancipation? Do you have to proclaim it, too?"

This startled a laugh out of Ellie. "It's a way for kids to get out of the system without being adopted or aging out. You have to prove it's in your best interests to leave, prove you can support yourself financially, and then present it to a court. You could also opt to serve in the military, and that would technically emancipate you, but it's really just another way to age out. I tried both routes. As you can see, nothing came of either."

"Can't say I'm a big fan of wearing a uniform," the older girl admitted. "And no one in this town hires anyone under eighteen. Is the foster system really that bad?"

Ellie rolled up her right sleeve and showed her the glossy pink burn scars marking where her previous foster mother liked to put out her cigarettes. "This went on for a year. You tell me."

The older girl looked slightly ill. "Fucking hell..."

Ellie rolled her sleeve back down and went back to picking at the grass. "But that might just be because of me. Plenty of kids get good homes and happy families."

"Are you seriously blaming yourself for this?" The girl demanded, grabbing Ellie's arm.

She blinked. "Why else would it have kept happening?"

The girl sat back and laughed, but the was no humor in it. "Jesus fucking Christ. No. No, that isn't how this works. That shit is  _never_  okay. In no way, shape, or form is this kind of abuse your fault. It's called  _abuse_  for a reason."

Ellie shook her head and sighed in frustration. "No, you don't get it. All of these people are approved by the state. They have full psych evals and background checks. And I'm...and I just fuck everything up."

"Ellie!"

She turned at the sound of Joel calling her name and spotted him standing in the spot he'd told her to meet him, glancing down worriedly at his watch.

"Shit," she muttered, starting to rise. "Look, I've gotta-"

The girl snagged Ellie' s arm and pulled her back down, whipping out a sharpie from a pocket in her denim jacket. She rolled up Ellie's sleeve and scrawled a seven-digit number across the scars. "This conversation isn't over, Ellie. Text me when you can..."

She broke the stem of the pumpkin off the vine and shoved it into Ellie's arms. "...and take the fucking vegetable."

"It's a fruit, actually."

The girl rolled her eyes and stood the at same time Ellie did. "Whatever, smartass."

Ellie took three steps before the girl called after her again.

"Hey," she said. "You won't fuck this up. You care too much."

"Don't overestimate me, " Ellie shot back dryly. The girl huffed a laugh and walked off. Ellie stared after her for a second, then rolled up her sleeve and looked at the messy numbers.

_Did... did I just make a friend?_

Her stomach fluttered nervously at the thought. She'd never had a friend before. Not really. It was then she realized she never learned the girl's name, but when she looked up there was no sign of her.

"Ellie!"

She rolled down her sleeve and ran to meet Joel, carefully cradling the pumpkin. The relief on his face for that fraction of a second made her chest tighten. She found herself agreeing with the girl. She couldn't fuck this up. He actually cared. She couldn't fuck up and make him hate her like the others. She didn't think she could take that again.


End file.
